I’m another who piled on the pounds due to medication & depression, thanks to a congenital spinal condition. Ironically, I was anorexic as a teen, as a result of trying to control the only thing I could in a sea of physical & sexual abuse.
Happy, contented people do not gorge on buns. When I was diagnosed with diabetes last year, it brought a sharp focus to my mental health (a dying father, own business, child with disabilities, my own disability, caring for my mother). Although diet was a big factor, the greatest change I made was recognising I had mental health issues that needed to be addressed.
Im lucky; I have a DH with family private healthcare, so I could access immediately therapy & help. The NHS is at a crisis point, with mental health services extremely underfunded, long wait times & scant provision if inpatient treatment is needed.
As I said, I have a congenital disability. Alongside mental health help, I have been able to get out & exercise within the boundaries of my disability. Again, I’m one of the fortunate ones who can afford to prioritise my physical health. But this is external to the NHS; I know others who were diagnosed with Type 2 around the same time as me who are still waiting for referrals to NHS mental health services to help unpick the compulsions that lead to poor dietary choices.
Let’s be honest here. A good diet is an expensive one. You only need to look at the above inflation rate food price rises to quickly assess that those who rely on low wages and benefits cannot afford good, non ultra high processed food.
We are also time poor. House prices & rents are such that there isn’t much time to prepare good, healthy food for your kids once you have returned home from a full day at work. It isn’t like the 70s when I was a child, where one salary was enough to feed & keep a roof over your family’s heads. What better than a pizza grabbed on the way home from work, to feed the family quickly as they come in from after school care? You’re knackered, the kids are knackered, fast food fulfils that time restricted void.
No one here would be willing to give up 50-75% of their house price to enable one parent to be home to cook healthy nutritious food for the family. We have made housing into a profit making cash grab or pension alternative rather than housing being seen as a home. The fact that one average income doesn’t come anywhere close to affording a mortgage or requiring Housing Benefit to top up private rents shows how successive governments have failed to tackle what is at the heart of good welfare & wellbeing; being warm, safe & loved.
We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Even if food was cheaper & at pre Brexit (as an arbitrary date) cost, the CoL energy increases mean that some people, even once they have food to cook, they can’t afford the gas or electricity to heat it.
We can educate ourselves until we’re all nutritionists but that’s sod all use if you can’t afford real ingredients or the means to cook them. Good food & spiralling housing/living costs are not bedfellows that ensure good mental health are they?
Stress, depression, low self esteem, non paying clients, cPTSD, family illness, low income, housing insecurity; all can lead to self medication with cheap, ultra high processed foods that stimulate those reward centres in your brain. I know, because I have been there & done it. And I’m an old, well educated, intelligent bitch.
There is no single solution to the UK’s obesity crisis. It’s a highly complex situation. However, good mental health support would be an excellent start. Reducing housing costs so families are left with a greater percentage of net income to buy good food would help. Making houses homes, not cash cows would be a fabulous sight. Reinvesting profits from energy companies into cheaper, cleaner energy (cough nuclear cough) or renewable sources would help, rather than line the pockets of those that already hold the wealth. I wouldn’t start with education (ironic as I first trained as a teacher many years ago) because it’s bugger all use if you can’t afford the foods or the energy to cook a good, healthy meal.
In a year, I’m a third of my body weight down & still losing. But as I said, I’m one of the lucky ones. Lambasting & vilifying obese people is a self defeating strategy.
And as for that haunted hand puppet Widdicombe in The Guardian yesterday, commodifying a simple cheese sandwich as a luxury item; at least if we chopped her into 80 million pieces & distributed it, we’d all at least have a bit of fruitcake to eat.